In many places worldwide, population demographics point persuasively towards a gradually emerging mismatch between the need for medical care among aging populations, and the number of health care providers available to respond to the need. There are many proposals, from increased training of medical professionals, to telemedicine, and electronic patient records, which may satisfy the needs to an extent. Telemedicine can fulfill an immediate need for consultation by a remotely located physician or specialist. Telemedicine could also be applied to the monitoring of slowly evolving medical conditions, such as chronic wounds or infections. However, there is certainly room for a multiplicity of solutions.
As a parallel and interacting societal and cultural trend, the Internet is enabling families and individuals to have greater influence on their own health and well being, as health and medical information has become increasingly accessible. However, in many instances, significant time can pass during which subtle physiological changes can be occurring to an individual without their awareness. Alternately, individuals can be aware of a more obvious physiological change, but lack any way to quantify and confirm the change. Thus, a system or device that can detect, quantify, and track physiological changes would have significant utility. Examples of such physiological conditions might include changes in nutrition, weight gain or loss, and emotional state. As a further capability, the aforementioned device could have the capability to alert an individual, family members, and their health care provider(s) to detected changes. The system could also interact with a database to screen and tentatively identify relevant medical conditions.
As can be seen, a device or system with aforementioned attributes would have considerable value. To realize this value, such a system or device should be sufficiently inexpensive to be consumer accessible. The system should also have attributes, such as multi-functionality, autonomous operation, ease of use, and perhaps portability, to have it function as a natural part of the consumer or home environment. It should operate unobtrusively, collecting useful data while reducing its interaction requirements and maintaining user privacy. Preferably it can be useful for tracking a broad range of physiologic conditions (such as nutrition, weight, or posture, for example), some medical conditions, and have cosmetic applications as well. Likewise, the system should be sufficiently flexible to function properly for different individuals (such as different family members), and be able to accommodate ethnic, seasonal, and cultural differences. Such a system might be expected to be imaging based, but also accept other sensory inputs. A system with these features would enable many individuals to address their health and well-being issues more pro-actively.
There are prior art systems that consider some of the issues described above. As a first example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,437,278 by Wilk describes a medical diagnostic system that collects medical data from an imaging system or from a physiological measurement device. The Wilk '278 system attempts to automate medical data collection and diagnosis. For example, video image data is collected, and these images and related imaging parameters are compared to a master database to facilitate medical diagnosis. The collected images are also compared to prior scanned patient data to facilitate ongoing patient monitoring. Although it is strongly implied, rather than explicitly stated, the Wilk '278 system is targeted for use in clinical environment. For one, the system of Wilk '278 is to be operated by a health care professional or an unskilled aide. Wilk '278 also anticipates that the imaging device can be a video camera, an X-ray machine, an MRI scanner, or a CAT scanner. The system is also intended to accept inputs from EEG and EKG machines and other monitoring devices. As can be seen, Wilk '278 employs expensive medical machinery that is expected to be in a hospital or clinic, and not in a home. Thus Wilk '278 does not propose a system for monitoring physiological conditions that is applicable to the home environment.
As another example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0149140 by Eldridge provides a diagnostic and treatment system for patient diagnosis and crisis management. The described system accepts a variety of inputs, including video, sound, speech recognition, and sensor signals. However, the system application is targeted towards a medical crisis type environment, such as an emergency room, where it will integrate inputs from various devices and output diagnosis and treatment information. While some consulting doctors may be remotely located, some health care professionals are present to operate the system and treat the patient. Thus, again, the Eldridge '140 system does not propose a monitoring system for physiologic conditions applicable to the home environment. Specifically, it can be seen that neither Wilk '278 nor Eldridge '140 anticipate an unobtrusive privacy-maintaining system capable of ongoing, day after day, monitoring of multiple individuals. Additionally, neither system provides image normalization to reduce the variability associated with capturing images of different individuals, under a variety of lighting conditions, taking into account seasonal changes, and other factors that would be common to capture in a home environment.
The general need for physiological monitoring of individuals outside the typical clinical environment is known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,205,716 by Peltz describes a modular portable video-conferencing enclosure or kiosk for facilitating remote telemedicine. However, the apparatus of Peltz '716 is intended to be equipped with sophisticated equipment to perform ECGs and EEG, and other tests, thus enabling telecardiology, telesurgery, and other kinds of direct medical care. The Peltz '716 system can be as expansive as a flatbed truck and is clearly not intended for common-day residential use.
As another non-clinical application, the prior art includes patents such as U.S. Pat. No. 6,927,694 by Smith et al., which describe camera-based systems which image facial features to enable assessment of the potential fatigue of a driver of a vehicle. Such systems can assess driver drowsiness relative to various physiological parameters, including eye blink, head movement, facial expression, yawning, while operating under a range of illumination conditions. However, these driver fatigue assessment systems are not used to assess the well-being or health of one or more individuals in a residential environment. Thus, these systems do not anticipate the issues (including managing privacy, unobtrusive image capture, image normalization), the opportunities, or the design of a residential family well-being monitoring system.
Other patents, such as U.S. Pat. No. 6,611,206 by Eshelman et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 6,968,294 by Gutta et al., anticipate the need for home health monitoring of individuals, such as the elderly, who would normally need a caretaker to protect their health. The monitoring systems of these patents includes a pervasive array of sensors, including cameras, to enable monitoring of the subject relative to behavior, emotional state, activity, safety, environment, and security. These systems also include devices to provide local or remote alerts concerning the subject and his or her environment. The systems of Eshelman '206 and Gutta '294 are neither unobtrusive nor intended for generalized family health care. Additionally, these systems really do not provide imaging-based health assessments for multiple individuals that address the variability that would be expected, including variations in age, ethnicity, ambient lighting conditions, seasonally induced changes in appearance, privacy, health history, and other factors.
Another patent, U.S. Pat. No. 6,539,281 by Wan et al., provides for a medicine cabinet or similar device that assists users in selecting, taking, and tracking their use of medications. In this instance, the medications are provided with radio frequency identification tags, and the medicine cabinet is equipped with a radio frequency tag reader. A touch screen flat panel display can be provided with the cabinet, as an interface to the users. The cabinet may include a camera and face recognition software, to enable user identification. While the intelligent medicine cabinet of Wan '281 is useful, it does not use a camera for assessing the physiological state or conditions of the users, and as such, it does not anticipate either the issues or opportunities that arise from such considerations.
There are other health care devices that are more focused on the home monitoring of health or medical parameters, rather than general behavior and activity. As an example, international patent publication WO2001/071636 by O'Young describes a personalized health profiling system intended to collect quantitative health data on individuals in their home environments, so as to look for warning signs of potential disease or a changes in one's health or physical state. The data collection is intended to be sufficiently unobtrusive that it can be undertaken during normal daily activities, such as working, sleeping, or exercising. In particular, O'Young '636 anticipates that one or more sensors are to be worn by an individual proximate to their body, to monitor heart rate, blood oxygenation, gait rhythm, or body temperature. Similarly, international patent publication WO2005/006969 by Montvay et al. anticipates a health monitoring system that enables health related-coaching of an individual who may be in their own home. This system can have sensors that are worn by an individual, or implanted in their body. Such sensors can monitor the electrocardiogram (EGG) or a respiration rate of the individual. Other sensors can be provided, for example mounted to a wall, to monitor environmental data, like air temperature, humidity, and other parameters. While the devices and systems of O'Young '636 and Montvay '969 are targeted for home health care, they are not targeted for generalized family health care. In particular, they do not anticipate an unobtrusive system capable of ongoing, day after day, monitoring of multiple individuals. Additionally, none of these systems provides image normalization to account for the variability associated with multiple individuals, lighting conditions, seasonal changes, and other factors.
The system of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0069752 by LeDain et al. has greater comparative relevance, as imaging is a key aspect of the described home health-care system. LeDain '752 anticipates a home health care system to facilitate medical care and monitoring for an individual by a health care clinician, where the clinician can be present or located remotely. To enable remote care, the individual of interest would possess an equipped medical kit, a teleconferencing camera, and a gateway computer for data transfer. The medical kit can be equipped with various medical devices to measure vital signs, such as a blood glucose meter, a blood pressure measurement device, a blood oxygenation sensor, or an ECG module. On the occasions that a clinician is not present, the individual would use these devices, following instructions provided by the gateway computer. The video camera enables real-time teleconferencing between the individual and a clinician. It also enables a clinician to record events from a visit to the individual's residence. Ultimately, a medical professional can use the video images to assess the physical condition and the behavioral indicators of the individual in question. Provision is made to unobtrusively hide the video camera within a picture frame behind a photograph. However, the photo is then deliberately removed when the camera is used for video capture.
The system of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0228245 by Quy, uses a similar home health care system to that of LeDain '752. In Quy '245, a user is provided with a health-monitoring device that communicates to remote locations through a cell-phone wireless device (such as a PDA) to a remotely located caregiver or clinician. The health monitoring device can have one or more modules or sensors for measuring health attributes such as blood glucose or oxygenation levels, blood pressure and heart rate, respiration, temperature, or exercise performance, of a human subject. A camera, which can be a separate monitoring device, or integral with the wireless communication device, can be provided to collect visual image data via still or video electronic photography.
Although the systems of LeDain '752 and Quy '245 describe home health care monitoring systems that involve imaging, in these systems, the health care monitoring is intended for a previously identified subject or patient. In particular, patients who are being monitored for a variety of conditions can be sent home with a PC-based or network-based telemedicine appliance that can be used to connect them back to a hospital or doctor's office via ISDN, DSL or cable modem connections. Additionally, these systems employ a range of bio-medical sensors, which typically require physical contact to function, and where imaging is only a secondary component.